Review of I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997) by Damir A — 04 May 2013

Possibly not so surprising to most, but I was actually quite shocked to see this film slated by critics and audience alike. I realise slashers have been overdone like crazy, but this was brought out in the era when they were fairly enjoyable, and in my opinion, credible - we were all fairly virginal to the psychotic killer phase at this time.

To me, this is one of the few films, along with 'Scream' that defines horror and as such is the basis of many copycat producers, including the Wayans brothers who used this as the basis of their cult classic spoof flick 'Scary Movie'.

It centres around a hit and run accident whereby four teenagers agree to dispose of a body whom they had accidentally knocked over on there way back from a party. Unlucky for them that the man didn't actually turn out to be dead, and one year later he returns to seek his revenge with the aid of a very blunt looking fish hook.

As torture porn hadn't really hit our screens in this decade, it's not all about grossing us out with far fetched deaths, but it actually attempts to thrill us with a somewhat plausible concept, and with what we can look back on and see was an all star cast.

It's not relentlessly scary or comical, but it does develop the characters rather well as opposed to just disposing of them with mindless violence. There's undoubtedly a generational admiration from myself with this one, but others would be lying if they said they hadn't heard of it, and given its undeniable reputation, I bet a large majority of us have even seen, or wanted to see, the equally compelling sequel too!